Hi y'all.. What would you nominate to be the best dirt mover ADT's ??? I have thousands of metric meters to shift in a distance of about 2 to 3 miles off-road. The criteria should consider the following; - low cost of purchase as second hand in good running condition. - Very low down time - Low maintenance cost and parts - Can work in extreme hot climates So lets name a few and start from there; JCB, Volvo, CAT, Terex
If your buyin JCB or Terex make sure you've got a brand new service truck to accompany them.
I don't think I wuld even look at anything other than a Volvo. We ran Volvo, Cat, Terex, Deere, and Komatsu trucks side by side, and the Volvo beat them all hands down everywhere except parts availability.
C;mon alco... be honest. Your sayin a Komatsu beat another product in parts availability?
OK.... how big a service truck? a bought two JCB's 716
2 of em? Better make it 3 big service trucks.
Well if you got parts problems over there in the States... what the hell we gona do here in the middle of the desert???? ointhead
loooooooooooool :roll oh shiiii :Banghead
Didn't Volvo CE recently build a huuge warehouse somewhere in Saudi Arabia? I tried to google it, but I did not find the article I was searching for. Found another article... don't know if it's the one I were thinking about tough. http://www.menainfra.com/article/Vo...--total-commitment-to-the-Middle-East-market/
Well they do have a huge warehouse in the free trade zone in Jebal Ali in Dubai, but still to far and too much of a hassle to get things over. Thanks
You're a WHOLE LOT closer in Saudi Arabia to Sweden than we are in Western Canada.
If we can get Volvo parts down here in the *** end of Africa, i'm sure you can get parts
Well I'll have to start some sweedish courses then.... You guys got the blue eyes wihte man to thank over there, we brown eyes guys are a little laid back a bit ;-)
How much closer?:drinkup
Hope you are in no big hurry to get your dirt moved. Better buy a couple of Volvo's so you can use them to drag the JCB's out of the way and haul the rest of the dirt. Stick with 35 tonners, the 40's have too many problems, and the 29.5 tires don't seem to hold up as good as the 26.5's do for some reason.
That's funny Jerry!
That would depend on where in Saudi Arabia they are, now wouldn't it Isaac?
:shf well it already hit the fan, so if we have an on site mechanic would that make any diffirence? And what should we be looking for or keeping a closs eye on when operating the JCB's?
Possibly. I know when we needed parts for the love boat we just sailed to the closed boat dealership.
Why not just go to one that was open?
That should have been closest dealership. Hey... I'm a barkeep not a teacher.
LMAO, you crack me up!
volvo the way to go. heard the d models had trans. problems but the c models are bullet pruffe. we have a a25c and a buddy has 2 25's and 2 35's all c's and all have over 10,000 hours and run great. don't know much about the jcb's but the trexe's are a nightmare. had a guy around here that had 4 2766 trucks. ran 2 and had 2 parked so when one broke you had a backup. had 2 split in half when halling. anyone here familiar with komatsu trucks? heard there strong and fast.
I have heard from a couple people the Komatsu's are amazing in the mud. For reliability you gotta run Volvo, but for the Ejector your kinda stuck with a Cat.
never seen a ejector working. gotta be great for mud and slops
The ejectors are good for a lot. Mud, clay, anything that sticks. They are not as good for slop, as there is no full tailgate, and the slop still runs out the back. They also don't take well to rock and demo debris. They are very good if you have uneven ground where you dump, though I haven't had much luck spreading with any regularity with them like some think you can. I have seen an ad for an ejector body for Volvo. I think it was a Phillipi-Hagenbuch (sp?)
Jerry, do you have some ejectors?
EGS I don't have any, but I have rented them quite a bit over the years. All of my trucks are Volvo, A-35C and A-40
The reason I asked was we rented one most of last year and I loaded it. I thought it was pretty good outfit, the problem I could see would be the rollers that ride on top of the rails. Looks like they could wear out easily. I think they rented it to see if it would work to run a 824 on the fill and try to spread with them.
ever had problems stalling the ejector?
We never did but we only had it for about 800 hrs. I've heard they are going to replace our 740 fleet. I think they are going to go half and half with regular 740's and ejectors.
Did you mix it in with a normal spread, or did it run by itself? You are right on the rollers, both on top and on the inside of the bed. Rough loads beat up the tracks they run on and wipe out the rollers. I spread with an 824 a lot, even with regular dumpers.
As I recall, it never stalled, but sometimes you had to reverse and hit the brakes while crowding to get it started if you had a really sticky load in it. The trucks were D-400 series II, and we had 2 or 3 of them
That 824 would be nice on a fill, runs a lot cheaper then a 8. It was mixed in with regular 740's. If I remember we had 2 regular 740's and 1 ejector on that haul. When you spread with your regular dumps do you ever have any problems with the lift ram bushings?
I don't spread. Just dump it in a pile and go. Too many things to go wrong trying to spread. Tipping is only one. Wear on the spherical bushings on the hoist cylinders as you asked is another, and proper material placement as well. I could go on. An 824 has no problen spreading the piles a 40 tonner leaves. I also run a WD-600 Komatsu wheel dozer to knock down with, and it is graeat. Still cheaper than a D-8, and fast enough to run and clean the cut, dress the haul road, and then catch up the fill. I have enough bushing problems just from the amount of cycles they go through, I don't need to add to it by trying to dump on the fly. Last haul we had we were getting around 130 loads per day.
That's why I asked. We are always fixing the bushing. It is quite the job.
One thing about it, when you do it a lot, you get good at it. Some things I would rather not be that good at though.
True. I would rather be good at drinking margaritas, then changing lift ram bushings.
I vote for the undesputed king of all narrow access all terrain dumps. one one moving part so very minimal chance of down time. Usually only one tire so repairs are cheap. Available second hand very reasonable usually with very low hours... --- you guessed it the wheelbarrow.
Just reading thru this thread ironically enough no-one has been able to actually say what goes wrong with the JCBs...other than you need a pile of parts ointhead What sort of project have you got going over there? I am just about 1,500 miles north of you in Turkmen
greats videos
Well I have the JCB's running now doing about 30 loads each a day and the only problem we've had yet is with leaking seals. We had to change a hose on one of them and ordered the seal kits and filters to do a service for them and all is well. We are doing a shrimp farm here, on the Red Sea close to the border of Yemen.
Glad to hear you are getting it done. What is the capacity of the JCB's
They are JCB 716, 16 ton capacity. Thanks
we end up selling our terex dumps because of to may problems. Last summer we rented from all the different makers to see how they all panned out. this year we end up buying some cats and volvos. so I am guessing the office found them to be the best when it come to dollars and cents.
Well I'm almost converted to Volvo, for two reasons. First reliability, and then affordability.
I was on a job where we ran 3 Komatsu HM300s along with a couple of Cats and Volvos and the Komatsus impressed me the most. We ran those for a year and a half and I cannot recall any downtime on any of the Komatsus. The ride and the power of the Komatsus were better than the Cats and Volvos. The Komatsus have a nice riding front suspension that make the Cats seem very rough. The mirrors on the Komatsus were much better than the Cats. I liked the power windows on the Komatsus were if you had dusty conditions and then light rain you could roll down your windows for better visibility in the side mirrors. The steering had a smoother feel. I preferred the transmission shifting and the retarders on the Komatsus as well. I can not say much as far as affordability but not having downtime says a lot. I cannot say anything about long term durability either. From what I experienced the Komatsus had the better product. 621_Rocker
sounds like a nice piece to rent rocker but my question is how long will the electronics and all the suspention parts hold up. I know creature comforts add up to a more productive day for the operator......... but when that stuff gets a gremlin running around the downtime can definatly be more expensive. we have an a25c volvo and rubber block suspention and sliding windows. with less electric stuff to go wrong we may not be as comfortable but we don't breakdown with funny error codes.
Yep, "C" model Volvo is the way to go. Less to go wrong than the "D", and some of the problems of the unlettered versions were improved upon. They may not be the prettiest or most comfortable, but over time, they have proven to be the most cost effective. I have only seen TWO major component failures prior to 14,000 hrs, and both were the result of lack of lube oil in a drop box due to negligence on the jobsite. I have seen 12,000 hr Volvo's run with higher availability than sub 4,000 hr Cat trucks. The operators all preferred the Cat, but they could not compete cost wise with the Volvo.
That Volvo keeps getting more attractive....
buckfever: I have experience with the Volvos as well. They are a good machine. I was recently running one of a fleet of six A40s (unknown generation, manufactured around '99). They were good machines except for downtime experienced from error codes and not wanting to shift in to gear. What you call creature comforts I would call features that improve productivity. A better ride can mean that you can run faster and increase your load count. Being able to see better out of your mirrors when backing up in to position means that you can probably do that faster and safer. Another thing with the Komatsu mirrors over the Cat was that they were more ridgedly mounted where the Cats would shake a little. I am sure that at some point the power windows will wear out on the Komatsus but they did help to improve machine productivity. Besides helping out with vision the convienance of the power windows helped out with hearing the excavator operator honk when the trucks were loaded. Nobody would want to deal with opening a slider everytime they went to load. I am by no means a brand loyalist. Caterpillar has their lemons along with their cherries. From my anecdotal experience the best loader that Caterpillar ever made was the 970F. It is a better loader from the operators stand point than the 972G they replaced it with. I ran a Volvo loader and I cannot remember the model but it was ever so slightly larger than a 980F and I thought it was hands down a better loader than the 980F or 980G. A friend of mine who I have a lot of respect for as an operator ran a 950H from new and thought it was the biggest piece of junk for a loader that he has ever ran. All of what I am saying is that my 1 1/2 year experience with a 30 ton class Komatsu ADT has been very impressive. They seem to have done things right when they built this one. And like I say the long term durability is unknown. How many hours until major components start to degrade or fail? 621 Rocker
i totaly understand what your saying. We don't use ours for the kind of dirt moving you guys do. we run hard core for 3-4 days and then it may sit for a week. The only proble i have with all that stuff is that we keep our equipment till it's dead. So the little things lke windows that won't go down. seats that don't move. I can go on and on about thet little stuff that just pi$$es you off when it qiuts working. For what you seem to do I completly understand the need for the nicer stuff. makes a long day not seem so long. Just wish there was a way to buy a striped model. kinda like buying a car.
Volvo is #1 I have worked on Volvo haul trucks for 12 years. They are better than any other truck on the market. You can't go wrong with 35/40 C or D. The components are almost identical. The transmission was updated along with the dropbox, but they are almost identical. The dropbox is the weak part of the Volvo's because the differential assembly tends to fail. They should be pulled and rebuilt every 10000 hours. Well maintained their engines will last 20,000+ hours. The ride in the D models is pretty smooth too. The problem with the newer trucks is they are integrated with more computers and diagnostics than older trucks. This can be an issue on any model when these systems cause problems, on the other hand they are great for preventative measures provided your operator doesn't ignore them. You should test drive a few trucks and see what you think. My second vote would be for Komatsu, third Cat. Stay away from Terex unless you love the lack of product support, the incredible price of their parts, and the truck kicking your ass when you drive it.
how about tail gates. ours doesn't have one but we barrow one with. definatly halls more but have heard when you start halling big rock the gate gets beat to death. also halling stumps is a good way to rip the hole gate right off the truck.
For starters a new tailgate from Volvo would cost you around $25000. If you can find a good used one it would be around 5 to 6 thousand. There are some aftermarket tailgates made by logan corp, but I don't know anything about their quality. I have heard things but I would never make a judgement without finding out first hand. The tailgates do get beat up quite a bit, but you can always fix them up with some new plating and a little welding. The biggest problem I see is the arms on the side bending.
Well Ive been using two JCB716 for over a month now and other than your regular maint. and a steering ram seal kit changing on one of them, they are running like a dream. I am considering buying a couple more. So much for the buy service trucks for each of them ***